Re: [pcre-dev] PCRE -> PCRE2 porting notes / PCRE EOL timesc…

On Wed, 9 Mar 2016, Matthew Vernon wrote:

> 1) Is there a planned EOL for PCRE?

No, but I personally would like to stop working on it asap. I'm hoping I
may be able to withdraw when PCRE2 is 2 years old - which will be at the
start of 2017. However, I expect people will go on using PCRE1 for many
years. I know one user has persuaded Zoltán to backport some of the JIT
updates from PCRE2 to PCRE1, which seems to suggest they want to stick
with PCRE1 (which from my point of view is unfortunate). Of course,
there's no reason why someone else couldn't start maintaining it - which
will have to happen one of these days anyway, as I'm not getting any
younger. :-(

> 2) Are there any notes (beyond the initial PCRE2 release announcement)
> on porting applications from PCRE to PCRE2?

No, and I do think it would be a good idea if such notes were provided.
Perhaps somebody who does such a porting might like to write some? I
would be happy to put them in some suitable place (e.g. into
distribution tarballs).

> [0] My initial feeling is that the next Debian release should contain
> both PCREs, but that for the following release getting everything onto
> PCRE2 might be a plausible goal

Sounds good! (I remember how long it took for Debian to move from Exim3
to Exim4.)

Philip

--
Philip Hazel